Wednesday, May 05, 2010

it's only wednesday but i feel pretty safe in bestowing this week's "look who's oozed out from under its rock" award and "feces flinger of the week" trophy to disgraced former FEMA head michael "heckuvajob" brown for his transparently self-serving efforts to wipe the stink of katrina onto obama:

brown:

and i think the delay was this: it's pure politics. this president has never supported big oil. he's never supported offshore drilling. and now he has an excuse to shut it back down.

you've already heard bill nelson, senator from florida, saying offshore drilling is DOA. they played politics with this crisis and left the coast guard out there doing what they're supposed to do.

cavuto:

so michael, you don't take him at face value when he says a temporary halt in offshore drilling is just that — a temporary halt.

brown:

no, no. look bill nelson — and you know, they don't say these things without it being coordinated — and so now you're looking at this oil slick approaching the louisiana shore, according to certain NOAA and other places, if the winds are right it'll go up the east coast. this is exactly what they want. because now he can pander to the environmentalists and say, 'i'm going to shut it down because it's too dangerous.' while mexico and china and everybody else drills in the gulf, we're going to get shut down.

brown:

hey, hey, chris, i think there's two things. i think, one, we're seeing the rahm emanuel rule number one, ah, taking effect. and that is, "let no crisis go unused". so, this is an opportunity for a president who wants to bankrupt the coal industry and basically get rid of the oil and gas industry to shut down offshore drilling in the gulf of mexico.

[snip]

matthews:

why would somebody sabotage something that would cause this kind of damage to our planet, really?

brown:

oh well, because i think there are terrorists in the world who would like to do that sort of thing. terrorists don't give a rat's butt about the ecology or anything else. all they care about is hurting america.

[snip]

matthews:

... but he just came out for offshore oil drilling.

brown:

oh, chris, ah, i'm glad you asked that. he came out and said, look, i'm going to approve oil and gas drilling. and all you guys went, look what a great guy he is, trying to reach out to everybody else. chris, all he did was he approved two existing leases on the northeast coast, and shut down all the other proposed leases on the west coast and the southeast coast. there was nothing new in what he did.

matthews:

but don't you know what you're saying to a third party, not somebody like myself or somebody like yourself, listening to you, thinks that you're sounding insane. you're saying that the president of the united states went into slow-mo here, somehow — or for somehow seemed to be working faster than he really was, but was really quite slow to get there, because he saw an opportunity to exploit a disaster so that he could reap discredit on to the coal industry.

and by the way, a couple of weeks ago —

brown:

no, no, no, not just the coal ...

matthews:

— he came down for offshore drilling so that he could discredit it when this thing occurred. are you suggesting he somehow knew this would happen and that's why he came out for offshore drilling?

brown:

no, no ...

matthews:

it sounds like that's what you're saying —

brown:

no, no, chris, hang on ...

matthews:

— and it sounds crazy. crazy!

brown:

well, and the way you just put it, chris, the way you just put it, it sounds crazy to me, too.